1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus, an image processing method and a computer program product for determining whether certain attached (added) information such as a copyright notice exists in an image to be printed.
2. Description of the Related Art
Currently, conventional image processing machines, such as a copier, do not judge whether a printed image has (or has attached) copyrighted information or not, and based on that judgment, alter printing of an image to be printed. Further, when an image processing machine judges whether many printed images has copyrighted information, it is necessary to judge each image to be printed/copied. However, to determine if each image contains copyrighted information in it the processing would take a long time for the judging process for each image. As such the entire printing process would be slow.
As printers, as typified by an ink-jet printer, become lower in price, it would be difficult to justify cost of employing expensive hardware in an ink-jet printer to judge whether a copyright notice exists. However, if the printer does not include expensive hardware and inexpensive software to judge copyright, it would require a longer time to perform a copyright judging process and printing.
An object of the present invention is to provide solutions for the above problems.
One particular object of the present invention is to provide an image processing apparatus and method and a computer program product that can store information which is attached (added) to a printed image and indicates either a copyright notice or a banknote together with information which checks an image to be printed and if the copyright notice or banknote information exists, an irregularity process is performed for the image to be printed.
Another object of the present invention is to provide an image processing apparatus and method and a computer program product which does not judge whether attached (added) information exists in an image to be printed each time the image is to be printed so that high speed processing can be performed.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide an image processing apparatus and method and a computer program product that have a new function not known before.
The foregoing and still other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become fully apparent from the following description to be taken in conjunction with the attached drawings.